Will we reach the year 2100?
We are all in a very difficult time at the moment.
People like Sir David Attenborough are telling us all about so many things that are changing with our planet.
It appears to me that the heads of government meet up and discuss things, but drag their heels about making important changes to our environment.
I find it difficult to understand how a country like China, with all its modern technology, does not take more positive steps to control its health and safety.
My wife and I are both in our eighties: fortunately we have been lucky since the end of the Second World War to have had a reasonably stable life until now.
I predict that, as things are at the moment, there will be more unknown diseases occurring.
How human beings deal with these will become more and more difficult and horrendous in the future.
RONALD TAYLOR
The Government has announced that work on the Cambridge-Oxford Expressway has been ‘paused’. However, the reporting on this subject does indicate that other work on roads along this ‘Arc’ will continue. This raises the question of whether the Government is seeking an Expressway ‘by stealth’ rather than an overt proposal subject to consultation. Such a view is reinforced by an existing consultation being run by the Government spin-off, England’s Economic Heartland:
England’s Economic Heartland is currently running a consultation, responses due by 8th April, on the first stage of its development of a Transport Strategy across the Cambridge-Oxford Arc. Since previous publications indicate the ‘travel to work areas’ of Cambridge, Milton Keynes and Oxford are strongly concentrated around these communities, what need could there possibly be for an inter-regional transport strategy of this nature if the Expressway is on the cusp of being abandoned? This is a question to ask when responding to this consultation at: http://www.englandseconomicheartland.com/Pages/integrated-sustainability-appraisal.aspx Since parts of this prospective Strategy include: a Strategic Environmental Assessment; a Health Impact Assessment; a Habitats Regulations Assessment; an Equality Impact Assessment; and Community Safety Audits, one might conclude that a huge amount of resources are to be spent doing work not supposed to be occurring if a ‘pause’ on the Expressway had occurred.
Oxfordshire Green Party, and a huge number of other organisations and individuals across the Cambridge-Oxford Arc, remain opposed to the Expressway which has the potential to increase traffic at a time when the Government knows carbon emissions from transport are increasing and need to be cut to help end the Climate Emergency. I look forward to reading that the Expressway has been unambiguously cancelled, not ‘paused’, delayed or subsumed into other work the Government appears to be commissioning.
STEVE DAWE
Press Officer
Oxfordshire Green Party
IT REALLY is sad that dear old John Tanner has once again forgotten why austerity happened.
Not for fun, but because the Labour government had once again over spent for years, nearly bankrupting the country again.
Luckily they won't be getting another opportunity for a long time.
MARTIN RUSSELL
Botley
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